1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a resolution setting apparatus, a resolution setting method, and a recording medium recording a resolution setting program when a television is used as a monitor of a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
For the screen display of a television (hereinafter abbreviated to TV), an overscan method is conventionally adopted so that a blank portion of a video image signal is not displayed on a screen. The overscan method is a method for displaying a portion called a safety frame in the central portion of a screen by cropping the top, the bottom, the right and the left of the screen.
In the meantime, an underscan method for displaying entire image data on the whole of a display screen is adopted for a monitor dedicated to a computer. The underscan method is a method for making a dot-by-dot display without cropping the top, the bottom, the left and the right of the screen of image data.
FIG. 1 shows a screen display of the overscan method and that of the underscan method for comparison. A display screen 1 shown in FIG. 1 represents a display screen having a display active area of 720(width)×480(height) pixels;
This display screen 1 has a blank portion of 138 pixels at the left of the display active area, and a blank portion of 45 lines at the top in the example shown in FIG. 1.
With an underscan display made in the display active area, entire image data indicated with an outer frame 2 is displayed in the whole of the display active area.
In the meantime, with an overscan display, an area of 85 percent from the center of the image data, which is indicated with an inner frame 3, is enlarged and displayed in the display active area. FIG. 1 shows the overscan area before being enlarged and displayed by enclosing the area with the inner frame 3.
Namely, a section indicated by a difference 4 between the outer frame 2 and the inner frame 3 of FIG. 1 is the cropped portions of the image data for the overscan display. Accordingly, if the underscan display of a computer is displayed unchanged on the screen of a liquid crystal TV, an image in the area of the difference 4 is not displayed.
For computers such as a laptop computer, a notebook computer, etc., the main bodies and the liquid crystal monitors of which are integrated as one piece, and for desktop computers to which a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) or a dedicated liquid crystal monitor is attached, their monitors are dedicated to the computers. Therefore, their display modes are set to the underscan method by default.
Accordingly, no problems are posed when the package of first basic software (such as Windows (trademark: hereinafter ditto) OS (Operating System: basic software) or Mac (trademark: hereinafter ditto) OS) is opened after purchasing new computers of the above described types.
“The opening of the package of software” referred to in the present invention indicates an “operation for accepting the terms and conditions of the license agreement of basic software”.
Incidentally, there are a considerable number of computer freaks users who purchase only the main body of a computer in which only BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is installed, and use a TV monitor also as a monitor of the computer.
Such computer users connect a TV monitor to the main body of a computer that he or she has just purchased, and attempt to load and open the package of the first OS from an HD (Hard Disk) on which the first OS package before being opened is preinstalled, or from, for example, a CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory), which is inserted into a CD-ROM drive and on which the first OS package before being opened is stored, while viewing the TV monitor.
As a result, a screen for opening the package of the OS, which is set as the underscan display, is displayed on the TV monitor set as the overscan method. Therefore, various types of buttons and icons, which should be displayed in the above described section of the difference 4 at the top, the bottom, the right and the left of the screen if a dedicated computer monitor is used, sometimes lie offscreen and become invisible to user eyes.
Namely, various types of buttons such as “return”, “next”, “cancel”, etc., which are displayed as a man-machine interface when the first OS package is opened, are sometimes displayed in the display area of the above described difference 4. Therefore, these buttons as a man-machine interface lie offscreen and disappear.
For this reason, a user cannot press, for example, an “OK” button as a response indicating acceptance to an inquiry, which is made by the first OS, about whether or not he or she accepts an agreement. If the user cannot accept the agreement, the package is regarded as being returned, and the first OS cannot be installed in the main body of the computer.
Additionally, a utility that can be set after the opening of a package is only the first OS. Therefore, the setting of a display mode cannot be made even if the first OS package is fortunately opened. As a result, various types of buttons and icons similarly lie offscreen and become invisible as described above on a screen of a system recovery running on the first OS, or on a screen of the settings of BIOS thereafter.
For example, if a key operation area at the time of POST (Power-On/Self-Test) is invisible, a setup or a boot menu cannot be invoked. Additionally, if a difference exists between a setting value returned by EDID (all of patterns of resolutions possessed on the side of a TV) and an actual display resolution, characters are blurred and become invisible.
This leads to the impossibility of the subsequent installations of various types of applications, and to the inconvenience of the unavailability of a TV monitor.
For the adjustment of a display area, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2006-107009 discloses the technique related to the application setting method for a safety area set on an OS such as Windows, etc.
Additionally, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2005-118340 discloses the technique that can guarantee the display of characters as an overscan display by taking overscan or underscan into account on the side of game software, and by displaying object data within a screen.
Although using the technique recited in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2006-107009 can avoid the problems of overscan and underscan, the problems cannot be avoided until the package of Windows OS as the first OS is properly opened and installed in the main body of a computer, and an application for setting a safety area is made to run on the Windows OS.
Namely, the package of Windows must be opened on the opening screen of Windows immediately after being purchased in the state where the top, the bottom, the right and the left of the screen are not displayed as described above. Therefore, the problem that a response using a man-machine interface cannot be made when the package of the first OS is opened, and the first OS cannot be installed in the main body of a computer is not solved.
Accordingly, an application for a safety area set on the first OS, which is intended to avoid the problems of overscan and underscan, cannot run.
Additionally, “the constant display of object data within a display screen”, which is disclosed by Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2005-118340, is made on the side of game software that runs on an already installed first OS, and the above described problem that the first OS cannot be installed in the main body of a computer is not solved.